Bangladesh Feminist Archives

by Rakkhoshee

“Hair is everything.”

Boy, was Fleabag onto something.

Of all the things I could’ve been marked for, that’s what they chose. I didn’t expect an educational institution in this godforsaken country to mind anything substantial. I’m not that naïve. I’m just frustrated, I suppose, that this is what truly mattered to the administration, the way some fine lines of keratin chose to push themselves out of my scalp. And I’m frustrated that so much of my time within school premises was wasted on discussions about how to magically alter a head of short, naturally curly hair.

This hair was my first inheritance from my nani, and my first lesson in how the body, especially the female body, is just another means of control.

The ridiculous policing began at the school gate, where the “sisters” checked our uniform and appearance. The norm back then was: two plaits tied with white ribbons or a white rubber band. If you wore a hijab, it had to be white. If you wore a niqab, it had to be the school uniform altered to resemble one, and all the extra elements of “purda” had to match the white of the uniform. So much leeway for so many walks of life. Not for mine, though.

My crime was a boycut. At the time, it felt practical, liberating, and most like me. To my teachers, it was tantamount to kicking a child. More than a few of them questioned me with genuine indignance: “Why would you do something like this?” “Why would you do that to yourself?” “This is against the rules,” the unwritten, improvised rules, apparently. As far as I could tell, the administration did not account for the fact that a girl’s hair might not be long enough to tame into a neat braid. They also apparently hadn’t considered that hair could be curly. It wasn’t frizzy, or unkempt. Just curly. “At least brush it.” My mother made sure I did. But the sisters at the gate also kept a comb with them, and they would use that fine-toothed comb, probably used on some other student before me, to rake through my hair and tear a lock off while they were at it, until they were convinced I looked as stupid as humanly possible.

This annoyed me greatly. Firstly, because I genuinely had to stand at the gate every day for quite some time until the involved authorities decided they could neither magically increase the length of my hair nor alter its natural pattern. And secondly, because so many straight-haired girls were allowed to walk right through the same gate with a cascade of loose bangs, all the while I had to stand there trying to explain the existence of my hair to a bunch of confused adults.

I wasn’t free to be myself in class, either. The boys, the self-appointed connoisseurs of femininity, as they like to fancy themselves, were kind enough to confirm it for me: “You’d look much prettier with longer hair.”

The message was reemphasized through the shame inflicted upon my mother. She’s a teacher at the same school. She told me how the principal rebuked her for “letting me” do this to my hair. My body was not my own; it was a reflection of my mother’s competence, her ability—or failure, to control her daughter’s deviance. I didn’t want to cause Ma any more pain, so I decided to let my hair grow long enough to tie it up. Shockingly, it did not solve the problem.

As my hair grew, so did the nature of the grievance. My curls, which I cared for attentively with wide-tooth combs and hair serums to preserve their spring, were declared “messy” and “unkempt” by the literal gatekeepers of education. Turns out, neatly tied curls were a problem, too. I made it a point to blatantly stare at the girls let through with their straight, loosely tied hair and bangs as free as the bows of a willow, mocking me with how easily they swayed. Not that my pointed looks could’ve ever shamed the administration into letting me through. But by that point, the unspoken rule was crystal clear: the standard is straightness. Curls are too wild, too unpredictable, too disobedient.

This persecution followed me to college, a place I had naïvely believed would be a bit more liberal, considering we were all young adults at that point. It was only when I started to add heat to my hair and iron it straight every single morning, doing serious long-term damage in the process, that the objections ceased. I had corrected my natural state to fit their manufactured ideal. And finally, I was palatable.

I study at a university now. My hair is free to be as curly as it wants at any length in DU. But I have a long way to go to undo the heat damage I did to my crown.

I know this is not a unique story. Hair has always been political. This script is ancient, and as ridiculous as any other standard of beauty. For many cultures, a woman’s hair is her pride and glory. Hair is seen as a source of sensual power so potent that in some places it must be covered and controlled. And in the ultimate perversion of this control, you could shave a woman’s head bald as a classic weapon of shame and punishment. Korean and Japanese men historically wore long hair as a symbol of manhood and social status—the Japanese chonmage topknot associated with samurai and later sumo wrestlers, and the Korean sangtu marking the transition to manhood. Hair of African Americans, dreadlocks, coils, afros, still face marginalisation in schools and workplaces even today. The hair and the body have always been gendered subjects, racially segregated, and fundamentally political.

It is important to remember, amidst all these rules and restrictions, not to internalize the shame inflicted upon your body. Your hair will always be too short, too long, too curly, too thin, too thick, or too much for a culture somewhere. You will do many things to be accepted and alter many aspects of yourself in ways you may not want to. And you will find that nothing liberates the head as well as wearing the crown that reflects your identity and lets your cosmic uniqueness shine through.

—————————————————————————————————

This piece is part of Political & Personal: An Anthology of Gender & Sexuality Issues in Bangladesh, a weekly series by the Bangladesh Feminist Archives. To read all contributions and view submission guidelines, click here.